A glance at your favourite social media content

As the new year is upon us, we had a look back at IFAD's social media highlights of 2015 to see what our followers engaged with the most over the course of the year. What were the agriculture and rural development issues you found most interesting? Let’s take you through our findings.

Achieving food security in a changing climate

One of the themes you have been engaged with the most is climate change and its impact on food security. Our Recipes for Change showed the effects of unpredictable and extreme weather conditions on rural people's traditional crops and dishes.

Partnering with rural communities in developing countries and local celebrity chefs, we brought you a taste of food traditions from around the world, and included the recipes for you to try at home.

At the COP21, our followers participated actively in our campaign "Make the Change". Thanks to everyone who contributed and shared the petition on social media, we were many who said "Make the change: Invest in farmers in the developing world now!"

Building a better world, it's about people

In September, the UN General Assembly approved 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that commit the world to shape a better future for the next generations. A future free of poverty and hunger. As entrepreneurs and agents of change, rural people and smallholder farmers are critical to ending poverty, feeding the world and protecting the planet.

We gathered stories of rural people, who with the right investments are making a considerable difference for their families and communities, by doing their job as farmers, fishers or livestock breeders.

The United Nations observes designated days, weeks, years, and decades, and assigns each of them a specific topic that resonates with the priorities of the global agenda. As a specialised UN agency, IFAD has celebrated many of those observances, like International Women's Day, World Soil Day and World Environment Day.

The one our followers engaged with the most was the World Happiness Day, celebrated on 20 March. Also, during the World Food Week in October, our followers engaged with us at multiple events such as the UN Committee on World Food Security and the Expo2015 in Milan for the World Food Day, on 16 October.

AgTalks: Bringing you the latest trends in small-scale farming

Introduced during the International year of Family Farming, the AgTalks series has become a regular appointment, offering up-to-date insights and research on smallholder farming. Innovators, policy-makers and rural people have come to IFAD Headquarters in Rome to join a live discussion, and engage with the audience in the room as well as followers on social media. The topics have often been connected to the international agenda, like the one on the International Day of Rural Women.

The content reported above is just a small piece of the broader mosaic of topics, events, and research findings we have talked about on social media.

If you want to know more about what's going on in the environment of agricultural and rural development, read more stories of smallholder farmers, find out the latest thoughts and trends on rural transformation - then stay tuned and follow us in 2016!